


oh, child

by magdaliny



Series: quiet americans [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Children, Domestic Fluff, Gardens & Gardening, M/M, brief mention of past violence against a child
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-19 18:53:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,702
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13129920
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magdaliny/pseuds/magdaliny
Summary: “Not at all,” Jay says, and then thinks:uh oh.  Lily's normally angling for a hug by now, but she's standing with her head down a good two feet behind her mom's legs, one little hand barely holding the strap that's dragging her backpack on the ground.





	oh, child

### March 2017

The weather's pretty balmy, by Sussex standards, but all the meteorological websites are baying for snow, so Jay's desperately wrapping the ferns in hessian with one eye on the sky when he hears Eva's tread on the bridge. He's expecting her and the kids for dinner, but it's—he checks his phone, as she comes around the marigolds—barely 1500. He untangles his thumb joint from the hessian and turns just as Eva's saying, “Hi, sorry—”

“Not at all,” Jay says, and then thinks: _uh oh_. Lily's normally angling for a hug by now, but she's standing with her head down a good two feet behind her mom's legs, one little hand barely holding the strap that's dragging her backpack on the ground. She'd been so proud when she picked out that backpack, her _very own_ , and _look_ , it has _Wonder Woman_ , see? and twenty minutes later Jay could've lectured a class about Diana of Themyscira's exploits with genealogical precision. Lily cleans that backpack herself, with her own little blue washcloth, rather than let her mom come anywhere near it. Jay's almost convinced she sleeps with it.

Eva shoots him a look like _yeah, I know_ , and says aloud, “I've suspected for a while that she's being picked on, but I've not been able to catch the little bastards red-handed until today. They'd trapped her in one of those sandlot lids and they were spinning it round. I found her at the bottom with her arms over her head, crying.”

“Chr—cripes,” Jay says. “Did you deal with the kids?”

“Yes, but...” Eva puts her hand on Lily's head; Lily doesn't shrug away and glare, like she does when she's in a mood. She just looks at the ground. “There was an accident at the lake today and they've cancelled the swim meet, and the boys are taking it out on everything that moves, so I can either make everybody's lives miserable or I can separate the herd. Would you mind looking after her until I get back? I'm going to drive Stalky & Co. up to their grandmum's for the weekend.”

“Is that a punishment for her or them?” Jay asks, and Eva finally grins, even if it's a little wobbly. “Sure, I'd be glad to. Lily can help me cover the plants—right, Lil?”

Nothing. Jay winces at Eva, who winces back. “I'll be back soon, sprog,” she says brightly, and gives Lily a little push towards Jay. He clears his throat and offers his right hand; Lily takes it as dutifully and lifelessly as a marionette.

He gets her set up with a blanket and a bottle of dandelion soda from the shed, and decides he's not going to patronize her by yakking cheerfully over her head while she's feeling like the end of the world's come down special, just for her. He goes back to the ferns and resumes his battle with the hessian, holding out hope for the short attention span of children, thinking maybe if he gives her some space she'll perk up and wander over. When he looks back after a while, his heart sinks. Lily's tipped over on her side, facing away from Jay and Diana the Backpack. She isn't quite curled up into the universal ball of misery he knows all too well, but she's doing a pretty good impression of a sick cat, and that's almost more worrisome.

Jay had been wondering if his job would be hard because she'd ask questions he didn't want to answer. No, Lily, he might have to say: it doesn't stop when you get older, people are awful no matter their age, they're cruel and unthinking and the world's full of hurt. Yes, Lil, someday you might have to defend yourself with your teeth and your fists. But still—but still, there are good people, too, and it's a beautiful thing to be alive, no matter the cost, and ultimately you'll be disappointed more often if you expect the best of everyone, but the alternative's no way to live, so: go on and live. He wants to tell the kids that _every_ time they're having a rough day. But he doesn't know how to say any of those things, least of all in a way that's not preachy, so he never does.

He's still not sure how to—be. Around kids. For seventy years his only exposure to them was, at best, as inconveniences, and at worst, as targets. And then months with Tank and her Lost Girls, approximately zero minutes of which he spent sober, and frankly it's a wonder he can string two words together in front of Eva's pack of hellions. He _likes_ them, even if he can't say why, even if his predominant emotion is still, after all this time, flat terror. They seem to genuinely like him back, which is an even bigger mystery. Maybe that's the trick. Be clueless, instead of acting like you've got all the answers.

Which is a good little epiphany, even if it doesn't solve his Lily problem.

Jay finishes arguing with the ferns and gets fleece unrolled over the dahlias with much less fuss. He should take out the silver palm, really, given how fussy it is about Sussex's very loose interpretation of summer, but he likes the clattering noise it makes in the wind, and what would he replace it with—more _roses_? God help him. Gertie's been threatening to seed the whole property with lemon balm if he doesn't take a cutting from her cordyline, but Gertie might actually be a nature spirit, given how little trouble she has with her tropicals, let alone all the rest. Maybe he can escape retribution if he 'accidentally' smothers the whole corner with mulch and groundcover. Whatever lives, wins.

Lily hasn't moved a muscle by the time Jay finishes staking down the fleece, and she doesn't react when he sits down on the blanket behind her. Jay picks up Diana and bites back a sigh: the backpack looks like it's been dragged all the way from school, scuffed up along one side and streaked with dried mud. It'll survive, with a little TLC, but right now it looks awfully sad.

Taking off his prosthetic is what finally gets Lily's attention; she rolls over as soon as she hears the vacuum seal release. The kids love it for some reason, Lily especially, and Jay's not sure exactly why. It's different, he supposes, since he doesn't see many folks under the age of eighty with missing limbs around the village, and thanks to Stark the arm looks a little like something that escaped a modern art exhibit, but the kids seem less interested in the arm itself than the process of putting it on and removing it. He wonders if it's a little—“naughty” absolutely isn't the right word, but something like it, if something can be risqué without any kind of sexual connotation. A human body's not supposed to come apart bloodless, like a toy. Uncanny valley. Lily watches carefully as he powers it down and pulls the velcro straps open. He tosses it off into the grass just to see what she'll do. Her eyes follow it, and then come back to him.

“Wanna talk about it?” Jay asks. Lily shrugs. “Well, if you're on the fence, _I_ wouldn't mind hearing what happened.”

She shrugs again and looks away. “Tom and Kenny are gobshites.”

“Lily.”

“They pick on _everybody_.”

“I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm just contractually obliged to get after you for your language.” Even if you do, he thinks wryly, pick up most of it from your mother, bless her. “What did they do today?”

“Rachel's mum was late too so we were playing with her Transformers and Kenny grabbed one and threw it in the turtle, so I climbed in to get it and they started turning it round and I couldn't get out.” It gets a little fast and damp at the end, but Lily just sniffles and sort of glares at him, like she's daring him to say anything about it.

“Didn't any teachers see?”

“Somebody fell down by the swings so they were all over there.”

“This wasn't the first time,” Jay ventures.

“No.”

“But you didn't tell your ma?”

“Rachel said her mum just said to ignore them and they'd stop. But they didn't.”

“C'mon, Lil,” he says, nudging her foot, “You can trust your ma to have better advice than that. What'd she say when she caught them out?”

“She said next time I should just kick 'em in the goolies,” Lily says quietly, and Jay has time to think _goddamn it, Eva,_ before Lily gives a sudden plaintive wail: “But I don't _wanna_ kick anybody! I don't _wanna_ fight!”

“You don't?” Jay asks. “But what about Wonder Woman? Wouldn't she fight them?”

“ _No_ ,” Lily says, with such _adult-you-have-disappointed-me_ disdain that Jay breathes a sigh of relief. The worst is over, if that's made an appearance. “She would've used her lasso and made them say _why_. And then we could've _talked_. And it would've been all better.”

“I hate to disappoint you, but most grown-ups don't win prizes for talking things through logically either. We're kinda bad at that, as a species.”

She shoots him a horrified expression. “But what's the point of growing up if people don't _listen_ to you?”

“Beats me,” Jay says, and Lily looks weirdly relieved. “Mostly it works out. And trying's better than not giving a crap. I think it's great you'd rather talk it out, because it takes a lot of guts to stand up for what you believe in. I'm not very good at it. Loads of times I'd rather just run away.”

“I just wish everybody got along,” Lily says. She flops out and spreads her arms wide, like she's about to make a lawn angel. “If I had a superpower it'd be making everybody _nice_.”

He feels like he's been electrocuted.

“By whose standards, though?” Jay asks, thinking even as he says it: _shut up, shut up, don't inflict your issues on the kid, she didn't mean it like that, she's not about to go brainwash people because they don't match her ideals—_ “I mean, somebody can do something they think is nice but somebody else thinks is awful. Or some people think being nice means making decisions for other people, but those people might want to choose for themselves. Or—” He feels his throat constrict, his pulse spiral raggedly up: “Or someone can decide the nicest thing they can do for the world is make some other people not exist—”

“Jay?”

He puts his hand over his eyes and says, “Sorry, sorry. Shit. I'm sorry. It's not your fault. It's just—nevermind. I'm sorry, kiddo.”

“I won't tell Mum you said a swear if you don't tell on me,” Lily says solemnly, and Jay chokes up a laugh. “But those things _aren't_ nice.”

“Some people think they are,” Jay says. He rubs at his face, stopping himself just before it starts to hurt. The habit he'll probably never quite break. Fuck. When he looks at Lily, she's sitting up with her arms around her legs, looking at him over her knees. “That's usually what makes people do bad things, Lil. Least in my experience. Some folks are so convinced of their own rightness they'll do anything to prove it.”

“Is that why Tom and Kenny are bullies?”

“I dunno. Probably not. They probably just think it's funny. I mean, does it really seem like they're putting a whole lot of brainpower into it?”

Lily scowls. “No. They're stupid.”

“Well—there you go.” The silence stretches on for a while. Lily just looks at her shoes. Jay groans. “I guess I don't have better answers for you, sweetheart. I'm sorry it's happening, that's all.”

“Jay?” Her voice is tiny.

“Yeah?”

Suddenly she's crawling into his lap. Hell—she feels six inches taller than the last time she asked for a hug. How fast do kids _grow_? He doesn't think she's crying but he rubs her back anyway. She drops her head onto his bad shoulder; he can just barely feel her cheek against the scar tissue, her breath on his neck, her hummingbird-heart.

“I promise it gets better,” he says. “Probably I made it sound like growing up's no fun, and maybe that's because for me it wasn't, and I don't want to lie to you, either. But. It's good. Life's good. And the older you get, the more freedom you can find, the better it is. Really and truly, Lil. I don't want you to be scared.”

“I'm not scared,” she mumbles.

 _That's good_ , he thinks but can't say: _That's good, I'm glad_ , because he doesn't want her to be scared, doesn't want anyone to be scared, not in the whole wide broken-down world; he wants to scratch it out of history. He knows intellectually that being scared is a good thing: being scared of failure and loneliness and death is what lights a fire under your ass and makes you live, makes you stretch, makes you make things, but god almighty he's so tired of _fear_.

Now that he's not sweating over the plants, the unseasonable cold is starting to sink into his bones. Lily isn't wearing a coat either. Jay thinks it's probably high time they both went in, got some calories into their poor tired systems, and did something fun. Luckily for him, Lily's current favourite thing isn't any kind of hardship to sit through.

“You want to watch _Bedknobs and Broomsticks_?” he asks.

“Okay,” Lily says, in the begrudging tones of someone who knows she's being managed but wants to do it anyway.

 

☆

 

Lily's perked up considerably by the time the Nurse arrives, coming into the sitting room just as Cornelius Brown starts singing “Eglantine.” Lily jumps up to greet her, and Jay has the good fortune to be present as the Nurse dances Lily around the room in her practical white sneakers, Lily trying to sing along with Professor Brown but giggling too hard to get the words out. She manages the last verse cleanly, but substitutes her mother's name: _Evangeline, Evangeline, oh how you'll shine!_ It doesn't quite scan, but Jay can't think of an audience that minds less.

“Can we watch another one?” Lily asks when it's over.

“I gotta start dinner,” Jay says. “Your ma's probably on her way back by now. But you can put something on the laptop and bring it out to the kitchen if you give me a hand.”

Lily finds something animated on YouTube and washes a bowl of brussel sprouts with the enthusiasm of the mad, or possibly the enthusiasm of a small child given one too many marshmallows with her hot chocolate. By the time Eva bustles in and exclaims, “That smells amazing!” the puddles around the table have...mostly dried.

“It's nothing much,” Jay says, embarrassed. “S'just the maple, it's tricking you.”

“Mum!” Lily calls from the other room. “Come and see what _we_ made!”

“Maple what?”

He points at the lids: “Maple sage brussel sprouts—roasted, not boiled, don't worry, Lily'll like them—acorn squash, I didn't know what the hell to do with them, so I just soaked them in butter and garlic, hopefully they're okay, and that's monkfish in, well, basically the same thing. Go on, see Lily, this'll keep warm indefinitely. Mostly.”

Eva squints at him in a way that's probably meant to be menacing, but her face is too fey and sweet to pull it off. “When you said you were 'experimenting' I assumed you meant, I don't know, chopping up sausage into a pot of macaroni cheese or something. You can't even eat any of this!”

“I can gum a little. Or, y'know, put some in the blender.”

“You're going to put monkfish in the blender.”

“Sure,” Jay says. “Why not? Tuna blends. You ever had avocado and tuna together? That's great stuff.” She throws her hands in the air. “Oh, c'mon. Like _you've_ never tried the weird gourmet baby food in Sainsbury's.”

“Oh god help us,” Eva says. “It's been into Sainsbury's.”

Jay pretends to swat her with a wooden spoon.

“ _Mum_!”

“Coming, sproglet!”

 

☆

 

“Aye up, Gladys, how're the children?” rolls into “Yes, the surgeon expects that they will both be able to walk;”—one of Eva's students admitted to being high on ecstasy while writing his most recent paper, but as it was phenomenally better than all his previous work, she is considering (not too seriously) whether a bit of brain damage might actually prove a boon to his academic standings;—“Dr. Leroi will not listen to reason regarding his Atkin's diet and I was wondering, Evangeline, whether you would have a dissuading aphorism I could share,” is rebutted with “No, but there's a scrap of Jacobean doggerel that might do the trick;”—Lily wonders if someone might pass the salt. She gives Jay a piece of fish to dissolve in his mouth while he slowly empties a syringe into his port. When he's done, he grins to show her the hair-thin bone caught between his teeth, like a magic trick.

“Oh, I had a chat with Susan yesterday, I forgot to mention,” Eva says. “Susan Carter, I mean,” she adds, but Jay's already looked up warily. There's only one Susan he knows. “I told her about the raised beds you built and she thought it was terrific. She asked whether you were thinking of building a little farm stand for the road once they produce.”

“Hadn't thought about it,” Jay says, “Didn't think I'd have that much extra, after sharing it around,” but what he's really thinking is: was there a hint, somewhere in that conversation, that my time's nearly up?

He knows the bungalow isn't his. Of course he knows; he's only the caretaker, like Eva was before him, the only difference being that he lives on the grounds. Like a flower himself, a seasonal thing you can transplant when the space needs filling. It's not unfair, or won't be when the time comes, but it's a weight all the same, knowing eventually he'll need to leave it. He'll stay in Sussex, of course, and probably even nearby—there's a tiny place near Eva's that's been for sale since he moved in—but he'll miss the house, and especially the garden. There's no garden like it, he tells himself unhelpfully, anywhere on Earth.

“Veg plots either give you nothing or too much,” Eva says. “And usually, it's the opposite of what you'd like, which in my case means all the tomatoes die and I get enough courgette to feed the five thousand. Peas, though. Peas are amiable and you always get loads.”

“Did Susan say anything about the tenancy?” Jay forces himself to ask. The Nurse, in his peripheral vision, gives him a knowing look he tries to ignore.

Eva shakes her head.

Well: another year, maybe.

He's grateful for whatever he gets.

 

☆

 

“Thanks again,” Eva says later, when they're sitting on the bench and watching Lily teach the Nurse how to hula-hoop. The ladies have the right idea, keeping their blood moving; whether or not it's really going to snow, the mercury's plummeting alongside the sun, which hasn't been visible for an hour behind dark rolling-up clouds, and Eva's bundled in three of Jay's sweaters. Jay's wearing Jakob's hand-me-down Burberry and a scarf the size of a tablecloth he can't remember buying, which means it's probably also Jakob's. Seems like half the old guy's wardrobe migrated into Jay's closet over the last two winters—not that Jay's complaining. (Nor Gertie for that matter, who he suspects as the agent of deliverance, with permission; Jakob's a benevolent hoarder.)

“It's no problem,” Jay says. “I don't mind. One of these times I'm gonna say that and you're gonna believe me.”

“I mean cheering her up, not just making sure she doesn't get carried off by the fairies.”

“I just gave her sugar and put a movie on. Really.” _Helped myself as much as I helped her_ , he doesn't add.

“Which is exactly what she needed,” Eva persists. Jay rolls his eyes. “Children are cured of melancholy much more readily by people who aren't their mothers, you know. You've performed your civil service. Did she let slip anything dire?”

Jay shakes his head. “Couple of jerks making trouble on the playground, is all it sounded like. She wasn't too keen on taking _your_ advice, Blackpool. How many times did you get in trouble for punching your classmates?”

“In my day, they tended not to believe grubby small boys when they claimed a Geordie midget knocked their front teeth out,” Eva says primly. Jay, startled, laughs. “Are you sure everything's all right? You looked awfully peaky over dinner.”

Jay opens his mouth to lie to her and finds, as per usual, that he can't. He sits on it for a minute but doesn't get any closer to a sense of clarity. On the gravel driveway, Lily is trying to balance the hula hoop on her head, weaving underneath it. The Nurse is watching as if nothing in the history of the universe has ever been more absorbing than this. He feels an old thrill of anxiety, looking at them.

“How do you handle it?” he asks.

“Handle what?”

“Her,” Jay says, gesturing. “Her, all of them. How do you—they were inside you, and now they're out here, in the world, real actual people with opinions and—I don't know how you do it. I can't imagine it.”

“I don't know.” It could easily be an empty brush-off, but Eva says it so thoughtfully that he looks at her and waits. “You know I'm not much for spiritual fol-de-rol,” she says. Jay snorts. That's an understatement. “Hush. It's only—well, it's the oldest cliché in the book, but it's there for a reason, I suppose, because there is really something miraculous about it—isn't there? I'll never forget one time when Chaz was a baby, and I was giving him a bath, and he was playing with his toy whale. We were talking about the ocean and I asked him what his whale thought of all the soap bubbles. Chaz said, 'He can't talk.' And then he said, 'He can't talk, but he can laugh.' I've never forgotten that. I thought: good god, where did that _come_ from? How do they come up with these things? It scared me, honestly. Just for a minute.”

Jay wraps his arm tight around his middle.

“It's hard,” Eva adds. “When they're little you think it'll never end, they'll never be independent, you'll be awash in diapers for the next three hundred years, and then the moment they run off you think _no_ , come back, I wasn't done yet! But you have to accept, eventually, that it's not about you. That's the hardest part.” She puts her hand on his elbow. “Which I think you'd be great at, incidentally. Steve too. I think you'd be really great—”

In front of his face, hot and close, full fucking surround-sound like the first time Eva left him alone with Arthur in the garden and he thought his heart was going to fucking stop, hot the boy's breath on his wrist, hot the skin under his hand, his little purpling face and the smell of his mother's blood in the hall; they'd told him _no witnesses_ and let him loose in the house like a fox in a chicken coop and it's not even the nineties, is it, not even the first time, or the last, it's nineteen-seventy-something and Townsend's waiting outside to clap the Soldier on the back and say—and say—

“ _No_ ,” Jay hears himself say, too fast and too loud, and shoves his fist up against his mouth as if he can stuff the word back in, or maybe to keep himself from vomiting, he's not sure. Eva lets go, probably in surprise, and then puts her hand right back where it was, firmer. “I, uh—no. I don't think. Sorry. I don't think I'd be very good. With kids.”

“Rubbish,” Eva says. “Don't give me that, you're _superb_ with my lot. How could you possibly think...”

She trails off.

Eva's not dumb, is the thing. That's what he loves about her: she's sharp as a knife, and doesn't let anybody off easy, least of all him. He didn't tell her a lot, when Arthur asked the big questions last year and there ended up being a collective capital-D Discussion, but he's certain it's enough for her to make the inference. He was held against his will, they know that much. They know he was hurt, deliberately, by someone in a position of power. Eva knows, but the kids don't, that he was forced—or coerced, maybe; he's never said the word _brainwashed_ in front of her, it never seemed to fit into the countryside, into normal life, he just couldn't stand it—to do things he didn't want to. Things that, he may have implied, involved other people being hurt. It's not a thing he wants her to be thinking about: kids being hurt. Or especially, fuck, him hurting kids. But she needs to know that he can't, he can't ever imagine—

She squeezes his elbow, and he takes a long, shuddering breath.

“I had a little—freakout. In front of Lily,” Jay says carefully. “I dunno how much she remembers of that talk we had, so she might. Um. Ask questions.”

Eva, neutral as a plumb-line: “What do you want me to tell her? Breathe, please, by the way.”

He tries. And tries again. “That's your department,” he manages. “Just, uh, warning you.”

“In through the nose, you pillock. Slower. Oh look, that's good timing, there's Gert and Jakob coming over. Toby! Here, boy!” And she whistles, sharp, close to his ear.

A moment later there's an enormous golden retriever between Jay's legs, wiggling ecstatically and licking his hand. It startles him into taking a real, deep, from-the-toes breath. The shock of oxygen is like a shot to the heart, and all of a sudden he feels that if he doesn't move he's going to die. He flings his arm wide so that Tobermory jumps up onto him, and then he rolls both of them off the end of the bench into the grass with a shout. Tobermory barks gleefully. Jay rolls up and scratches his belly, rough, and then he scrambles to his feet and takes off sprinting into the back, through the garden and over the bridge, as fast as he can, Tobermory a bounding gazelle running circles around him.

They run there in the growing dark until he sheds his layers, sweating buckets, heart like a kick drum. He feels exhausted and achy in the end, but cleaner. Clean and new as he pants into his knees. The dog panting too. Both of their breaths tangible things, whisked off into the woods to feed the trees. Human smoke. He feels so—god. He feels so grateful to be alive.

Gertie waves brightly as he comes limping back with his coat thrown over his shoulder, Tobermory trotting along at his side, and as he reaches her the first fat snowflake falls between them and lands on the tip of the dog's nose.

 

☆

 

“Weather's crazy here too,” Steve says, and so Jay has no recourse but to stick his arm out the bedroom window and bring in a whole handful of snow. “Okay, maybe not that crazy. Plants all right?”

“I hope so. Lily helped me cover the fussiest ones.”

“How's she doing?”

“Mm,” Jay stalls.

Steve obligingly drops a pencil, disappearing out of the Skype window to chase after it. The walls behind his chair are all sunset-bright; it's only 1900 in New York, and Steve hasn't even eaten dinner yet, though he's been picking occasionally at a fruit salad by his elbow.

“Were you bullied when you were a kid?” Jay asks.

Based on the sound and the way the screen wobbles, Steve must hit his head on the underside of the desk. He reappears in the chair, holding the pencil, his other hand in his hair.

“Sure,” Steve says. If he's startled he doesn't sound it. “Bucky too. I guess no more than normal—everybody seemed to get picked on at some point.”

“You ever figure out why?”

“God knows. Because we were Irish? Because I was scrawny? Because Bucky always had his nose in a book? Kids don't seem to need a reason.”

“Lily's getting picked on in school,” Jay says, and Steve makes a noise of comprehension. “Today was a bad time. I'm having trouble imagining _why_. She's smart, she's outgoing, she's funny, she's got popular older brothers—she likes the same stuff all the other kids do, according to Eva—”

“She's got freckles,” Steve says, like that makes any goddamn sense, and adds, “Oh, and: single mom.”

“Not for long,” Jay says. “I think Eva and Tabby are seeing each other on the sly.”

“Ms. Alawadi? The nanny?”

“Yup.”

“Huh,” Steve says. “I didn't see that coming, but now you say it, I'm not surprised. They sure will make a sweet couple. Though...I hate to be that guy, but that's not gonna make things easier for Lily.”

Jay sighs. “Really? Two moms aren't better than one? I'd've thought that'd be a perk, like having a pony. Anyway, she seems okay now. Eva's keeping an eye on it.”

“And you?” Steve asks. Jay tilts his head. “That sounds like an emotional afternoon. Considering.”

“It was rough,” Jay admits. He pauses. “Which is probably why I'm thinking about doing something really stupid.”

“I doubt it.”

“What, you think I'm not going to do it?”

“I doubt it's that stupid.”

“I don't know why you have so much faith in my plans. I'm famously the guy who had a panic attack and cut his own arm off.”

“You also broke into the home of the one guy guaranteed to help you without asking questions,” Steve points out. “So I got plenty of faith in your _plans_. I think it's fair to say your problem's in the execution.”

“Thanks.”

“You're not thinking about walking Lily to school and giving her bullies the stink-eye, are you?”

“That's not an awful idea,” Jay says, “But no, nothing like that. I was thinking about calling Tank.”

Steve's eyebrows hit the roof. “Remind me why that's a bad thing, again?”

“All the addiction websites say you shouldn't resume contact with someone you knew when you were using,” Jay says. “Not that I haven't already broken that rule, technically. Because, uh, full confession, I've been donating to that shelter she works at for over a year now. From the HYDRA accounts.”

“I had wondered,” Steve says, surprising him. “Well, c'mon. You've been tossing money at Sam's VA since before you left, it wasn't that much of a stretch to assume you'd do the same for your other friends.”

“I'm glad HYDRA doesn't know me as well as you do, or they'd've found me by now,” Jay says drily. “So, you see my problem.”

“I don't think I'd worry about it,” Steve says. “I mean, the websites—they're saying that to help folks avoid a relapse, right?”

“Ostensibly.”

“But you're not going to.” Jay opens his mouth, but Steve shakes his head. “No, tell it to me straight. Do you really think talking to her's gonna make you want to run up to London and find somebody to sell you drugs?”

Jay snorts. “Sweetheart, I'd be lucky if I got that far. The only reason I found smack in _Philly_ was because someone was practically putting it into my fuckin' hand.”

“So.”

“So.”

“So _call her_ ,” Steve says, leaning forward and pointing into the camera. “We both know you've been sitting there telling yourself she's in that wheelchair because of you, and worrying yourself to death about not telling her you're alive, but putting it off won't make it any easier. Just call her. She's not gonna be mad at you.”

“She'll be furious,” Jay says. “That's fine, it's her goddamn right after all the shit I put her and her kids through. I can take her angry. I just. I don't know. I'm scared anyway.”

“It's a big deal.”

“Could use some moral support, if I'm honest. You got a hand I can hold?”

Steve's whole face goes gentle and soft. It's funny: Jay can remember when he hated that expression. Crazy, the things you come to love about a person. Steve glances at something off to the side. “I'll be there in...sixty-seven hours, now. If you can sit on it that long. And, hey, if you need some reward-based motivation, I'll have a surprise for you.”

“It's my birthday, you better have a fucking surprise for me.”

“An extra surprise,” Steve says, grinning. “Although maybe I should use it as a bribe. Eva texted me photos of the dinner you made tonight. You gonna cook like that for me?”

“Soon as you _get_ here,” Jay says. “I ain't mailing good food across the Atlantic, you heathen. You know what cabin pressure'd do to a Yorkshire Pudding?” Not that Jay's ever made a thing as fussy as all that. Steve laughs anyway. “Gertie's helping me with the meal, since I still don't know what the hell I'm doing in the kitchen, so you make sure you thank her. Maybe bring some flowers. Nice ones, none of that plasticized crap from the airport florist.”

Steve promises he will, and excuses himself to make coffee. Jay angles for calories before he leaves, but Steve says he isn't hungry: post-mission meal with the Avengers ran late, apparently. Their mission, not Steve's. It took a long damn time, but it seems like Steve's finally settled into his routine of not punching things. Or, well, not punching things in anger; he's showed up to their Skype dates in a state of glowing dishevelment more than once, after boxing matches with Thor, who Jay hasn't been introduced to but is apparently the one guy strong enough to wring Steve out like a towel, excepting maybe Stark in his robot suit. Stark says it's on account of the vets: trust a bunch of old people to take no shit from their adopted ex-supersoldier.

Thinking about Stark reminds Jay to plug the arm into the laptop so he can send his weekly diagnostics. Steve comes back by the time it's finished the uplink; Jay hears him close the curtains in the room before he appears back on screen.

“So,” Steve says. “What else is new?”

Jay waits until Steve lifts the mug to his mouth to say, “Watched a documentary on phone sex this morning.”

Steve glares ineffectually at him until he finishes choking, and then says hoarsely, “I honestly can't tell whether that's an observation or a request.”

“Both?” Jay suggests. “To clarify, by 'sex' I mean I take my kit off and talk at you from thirty-five hundred miles away while you jerk off. Instead of, you know, waiting until we hang up like I figure you usually do.”

“Christ alive. You're gonna be the death of me.”

“Tried that once, but it didn't take. Is that a no?”

Steve leans his jaw on his hand and gives Jay the same look Romanova receives when she's being a pest, which is how Jay knows he's won. A second later, though, he's proved wrong: “I'm not having phone sex with you. I'm not kidding, I think I'd up and die. You want to get comfortable, though, that's your prerogative.”

“Don't mind if I do.”

“Shut the door. Gladys doesn't need an eyeful.”

“She's asleep, and anyway, she's probably seen me naked more often than my mother,” Jay says. He gets up and follows orders, skinning his shirt off on the way there. He's hopping out of his sweatpants when the laptop announces, “She definitely hasn't.” Steve says it with such conviction that Jay gives him some pretty serious eyebrow when he climbs back onto on the bed. He doesn't know if Steve's more flustered by the question, the expression, or the skin, as Jay rolls onto his stomach and one elbow.

“Well, he—” Steve starts, but Jay shakes his head. “Um, okay. You had these—I guess these days they'd call them sensory issues—with your clothes, when you were a kid. Socks, and seams, and anything with a funny texture, you hated the hell of out it. So you were kind of a nudist. You used to strip down and escape at every available opportunity.”

“I genuinely wish I could remember that. Were you around for much of it?”

“Yeah, but your ma always caught you pretty quick. No streaking down Flatbush and terrorizing nuns. Sorry.”

“Shame,” Jay says. “I bet I probably hate wearing clothes _now_ because of all those decades of brainwashing-enforced nudity, but seeing as your version's a lot funnier, I'm going to go on and pretend the former never happened.”

“Nat used to say if you've got to pick a truth, always go for the kinder one,” Steve says.

“Smart woman.” Jay rubs his eyes and gets caught by a yawn he's not expecting to be so jaw-crackingly huge. “Christ.”

“You tired?”

“Yeah,” Jay says, “But I don't want to go.” He knows it's stupid and he'll regret it tomorrow, and it's not like he won't talk to Steve again in a matter of hours, but sometimes it seems like the sooner Steve's going to arrive, the more Jay misses him. “Keep talking,” Jay insists, sounding like the kids when they sleep over and fight their bedtime.

“Okay,” Steve says. He reaches out of frame. “How about I read you Peggy's latest? That new drug trial's working better than they expected. She's a lot clearer now before she sundowns, and her hand's really steadying up. I got _two_ letters this week.”

“Sure thing.”

“ _Steven Darling_ ,” Steve reads; Jay rests his cheek on the back of his hand and lets his eyes slip closed. “ _Hasn't spring sprung! I hear Manhattan is still receiving the lion's blessing, but the lamb is in attendance here and the flowers must be seen to be believed. Carlos has wheeled me out into the garden and found me a board to write on. It isn't dignified, but moreso at least than the time I drafted a telegram on Barnes's back. Do you remember that spring, in Armentières, when Dugan had half his moustache shot off and Falsworth whittled him a replacement? Do you remember tossing both of them in the river? I'm sure I don't; all I remember is mud. Speaking of flowers, how is your lovely Patroclus? Tell him he must plant field poppy around the bridge. I've the blackest of thumbs but I always thought they would look splendid against the..._ ”

 _Sure, Carter_ , he thinks, three-quarters asleep: as if a body could forget a thing like that. The nails she left long for Nazi faces and her knee in his kidney. _Stay still for the lady, Buck_. Steve smug as shit. Oh Jesus but Steve won't let him live this down. He says as much later: You won't let me live that down, will you?

 _Never_ says Steve—Well maybe when we're a hundred.

Chance'll be a fine thing, he says.

“... _And give him a birthday kiss from me. Yours ever, Peg_. Well, you heard the lady. Poppies around the bridge. Hey, are you—yeah, wow, you sure are. Sleep tight, old man. Talk to you soon.”

 

☆

 

 _Had a weird dream last night_ , Jay texts Steve in the morning. _Did we ever have a mud fight in Brooklyn?_

 _No, in the war_ , Steve texts back. There's a long pause. _I won_.

 _You're lucky I can't call you on your shit_ , Jay almost types, and then backspaces. _Don't make me call Carter and check your math_ , he sends instead.

Very quickly, Steve replies: _Peggy won_.

 _That's what I thought you said_ , Jay says, and flings the curtains open on the big, white world.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry for the delay on this one, friends. Turns out moving across the country is a lot tougher than I'd bargained for! Someone send a St. Bernard to dig me out from under my hubris.
> 
> Most of the remaining ficlets (HA, -lets, who am I kidding) are about half finished, so I'm hoping it won't be too long before they're all out in the world. It's so much fun to be working in this universe again. Thanks for reading!! <3


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